


bare

by v3ilfire



Series: between fields of fire and miles to go [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 06:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7674004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/v3ilfire/pseuds/v3ilfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a need to get too close.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bare

There was a great deal of pleasure for Zevran in seeing Camilla bare before him, aside from the obvious. There was something watching her body change from the soft and well-fed life of cushioned nobility to a soldier’s hardened form, to being able to trace every new definition in her arms or her thighs and count her scars as she got them. It was almost… **  
**

The thought was interrupted by a blanket thrown right at his face. “You’re staring again,” she sighed. Zevran laughed as he spread the damn thing over himself. Camilla’s physically _impossible_ resistance to the Fereldan frost and his absolutely normal preference for climates that _aren’t_ trying to kill its people meant that he needed to pile two blankets over himself before the Warden could lay on top of them and cover herself with the third. Their arrangements were a dance of unspoken rules that they kept breaking despite themselves, an arm draped here or kisses trailed there, an occasional secret spilled into the darkness and then diffused by a joke.

He hated it, but he craved it. It made him happy to be alive. He felt… something, anyway. He didn’t dare give it a name. Hers would be enough.

Camilla molded against him as soon as his arm was around her shoulders, thumb trailing a healing scar on her upper arm. It was the most terrifying sense of normalcy he’d ever known.   
“Feeling better?” he asked, if only to break the buzzing in his own head. Camilla hummed something into his neck. Her fingertips brushed his collarbone on their way up to settling over his chest, calloused from bowstring and far rougher and more knowing of him than they were eight months ago. He had a sudden urge to kiss them, to kiss the soft skin of her neck, the insides of her thighs, to -  
“My feet are killing me,” she confessed. “But we need to make it to Denerim tomorrow. We’re running low on everything.”   
“I’m sure Sten will carry you, if you ask politely.”

Zevran barely heard her laugh. Camilla shifted a little in his grip and he felt the movement in the muscles in her shoulders (no longer swollen or sore, but lean, practiced). She kissed his neck - little more than a peck, but a kiss nonetheless. Neither said anything, neither wanted to admit to wanting.   
“This is a nightmare,” Zevran said instead.  
“What is?”   
“I believe I am adjusting to this terrible climate. I can hear my beautiful Antiva weeping for me.”  
“You’re such a drama queen,” Camilla groaned, but sat up anyway to make way. Her blanket stayed draped over one shoulder, revealing half of her in the best way, in the _worst_ way, in the way that meant she was no longer shy to show herself to him, in the way that meant that their nudity had become purposeless somewhere along the line and not just a preface to sex. “You’re staring. _Again_.”

He did not offer an apology. She did not expect one.

Once settled again (in the _damn cold_ ), Camilla scoot closer to him, but something gave her pause.   
“Now you are the one staring.”  
“You’ve got goosebumps on your arms. You’re sure you’re not cold?” Zevran had been, but without thinking Camilla had reached over to sweep his ruffled hair from his face and her fingers lingered against the tattoos on his face and -- no, he wasn’t cold anymore.   
“Your concern is touching, my dear Warden, but no, unfortunately I have grown accustomed to your terrible country.”  
“You’re working to save it.” She slid back into her usual position, fitting even more snugly than before. The silence that befell the tent only made it more clear that neither quite expected … any of it.

Eventually, Camilla’s breathing slowed in the quiet, her eyelashes fluttering gently as sleep soothed the last of her consciousness against her will. Zevran felt all of it, every little change and move and the whisper of her breath on his skin and the slight twitch in her leg. It was all so…

It was intimate. It was _intimate_ , and terrifying, and familiar in the most foreign way and he wanted it. He wanted it, he wanted her, he wanted all of it wholly and selfishly, all the awful and terrifying and consuming pieces of it. It would hurt in the end, it always did, but he fucking wanted it. First time in his life he was free to choose, and he chose pain again… but he would not hope. No, not this time.

That would be too much.


End file.
